I’ve been writing a lot about unfunded-pension liabilities, and so I’ve heard a lot of this: “You right-wingers act like this is a blue-state problem, that it’s all Illinois and California, but what about red states like Kentucky?”
Kentucky’s finances are indeed a mess.
Kentucky has a Democratic governor.
Kentucky has a Democratic lieutenant governor.
Kentucky had only five Republican governors in the whole of the 20th century.
(That’s four more than Mississippi.)
Democrats controlled the Kentucky legislature between Warren G. Harding’s presidency and Donald Trump’s.
In the two-party era, 80 percent of Kentucky’s governors have been Democrats.
(Kentucky loved the Whigs.)
Kentucky went for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 but has gone Republican in presidential elections since then.
So, is it a red state, and are its problems red-state problems?
That does not seem obvious to me.